Ricky Hochstetler hit-and-run homicide | Timeline

Key events in the Manitowoc County hit-and-run death of Ricky Hochstetler

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Ricky Hochstetler, who was a junior in high school at the time, was killed by a vehicle while walking along a rural Manitowoc County road in 1999. The driver of the vehicle was never found.(Photo: File photo/HTR Media)Buy Photo

Jan. 10, 1999

Ricky Hochstetler, 17, leaves a friend's house in Manitowoc and walks to his home just before 2 a.m. He never makes it. At 2:20 a.m., a vehicle strikes Hochstetler on a county highway about 50 yards from his house. The driver flees. Lt. Rob Hermann, an off-duty Manitowoc County Sheriff's deputy at the time, responds to the scene to assist with crash reconstruction. By 9 a.m. Hermann, who worked as an auto body technician at his family's salvage yard in nearby Cleveland, informs the sheriff's department that the fleeing vehicle was a late model Chevrolet truck, Blazer or Suburban. From that point on, sheriff's deputies only pursued the type of vehicle Hermann, the current Manitowoc County sheriff, told them to look for.

Jan. 12, 1999

Robert Jeffery, a rural Newton resident, alerts authorities to broken vehicle parts he spotted at a remote Manitowoc County intersection that leads toward Cleveland.

Jan. 15, 1999

Newer style car parts are found near Hochstetler's driveway just past the crime scene. Lt. Mike Bushman of the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department dismisses the car parts as being irrelevant to the case.

January 1999

Then-Manitowoc County Sheriff Tom Kocourek declines to canvass local bars, bowling alleys and diners for leads and suspects. No overnight surveillance checkpoints are done near the crash or the rural Newton intersection where the other vehicle parts were found. Kocourek also decides not to bring in the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation or Wisconsin State Patrol crash reconstruction experts.

Summer 1999

The investigation flounders, and the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department has no suspects.

November 1999

During an interview with the victim's stepfather, Bushman raises the possibility that Hochstetler was killed by an off-duty deputy. According to reports, Bushman wanted to gauge the stepfather's reaction to the suggestion of a police cover-up.

2000

Kocourek announces his intention to retire after serving as the Manitowoc County sheriffs since the late 1970s. Ken Petersen becomes the new sheriff. He appoints Rob Hermann as his under-sheriff/inspector. Bushman is promoted to deputy inspector of operations, the third highest position in the agency. The Hochstetler vehicular homicide remains cold and falls out of the public spotlight.

2002

Petersen says short of a confession, the hit-and-run homicide will go unsolved. "What it's going to take to solve the thing would just be luck at this point," Petersen tells The Associated Press.

January 2004

Bushman and Detective James Lenk deny the victim's mother her request to review her son's police reports. "It was explained ... the details would be too graphic for her to deal with emotionally," state investigative documents show.

February 2004

After speaking with the victim's mother, Debi Hochstetler, the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation agrees to look into her son's five-year-old cold case. The DCI is told that an off-duty sheriff's deputy may have committed the crime.

August 2004

During questioning, Rob Hermann, the Manitowoc undersheriff, tells the DCI he was not involved in the hit-and-run death.

September 2004

The DCI closes its probe. It finds no evidence that Hermann, or anybody in Hermann's family, was involved in the fatality. The DCI provides Manitowoc County with a five-page list of recommendations to rejuvenate the investigation.

2006

The victim's mother launches a website — rickyh.com — seeking the public's help to solve her son's crime. Petersen announces his pending retirement as sheriff after 32 years in the department. Undersheriff Rob Hermann defeats Sgt. Andrew Colborn in the general election to become the new sheriff.

July 2009

October 2009

Laura (King) Lee, a former live-in girlfriend of Hermann, tells the DCI that she can't remember whether Hermann was home on the night that Hochstetler was killed. The DCI probe reaches an impasse and the investigation is halted.

January 2016

Debi Hochstetler meets with Lt. Detective Andrew Colborn to review her son's case file. Colborn gives her little reassurance that the crime will be solved, given that 17 years have passed. Colborn speculates that the culprit might have be an undocumented worker who fled the country or it could have been a former Manitowoc taxi company entrepreneur who died in 2006.